longwood

pump those
lil legs
squeezing
her thigh
in denim
round and
round for
parking
taking
the
middle way
eco mode
on the
hybrid
brandywine
and the
real wine
kennett
square
kung-fu
freak storm
chased us
if I die now
I left
a clean car

bobonauts

didn't know he was an actual artist
til i came across this
trick is you gotta print it
ephemeral screech fan
a window is a box for a fan
a box is a window into anywhere
hand me ash children
don't drink IPAs but now that you have one
a learning lesson gets lighter
it's between that box and a joint and fine art
a buncha likes floating around a kitchen for fourth of july
in front of the hair spot promised land
what are you doing for the fourth
cats are dead half the time
i get it it's day four philadelphia projexts
everybody just clicks
there's no applauding to make sense
give me those fucking lasers
80 years if i'm lucky isn't

Trapping

O thar she blo suh
the arrival of plants on land
the arrival of fur-bearers
the french the british the americans
came for riches
stayed in their niches
moved their heads independently
pointing their jaws
call it innovation
i make my neck move
tectonic patterns put out models
put out good models of suvs
i'm a low-fin fish
here's my low fin
called a limb now
some weirdo in a library
in the lab early
we all have a humerus
let's bend together and allow
let's punt around and be nice
now we're on land
crescendo
feeling it
limbs
up

coo

Life is a lark
in Willow Grove park
old woman on the bus
black woman is the spark
she found joy in the babe
her eyes and her smile
small grasping hands
the coo of a child
pale skin and blushed cheek
old and young and
I in between
when we cross to the end
we'll wind up at the start
because life is a lark
in Willow Grove park

eclypse

I am window
with bars and lace
and pink secret
black petroleum
bucket of bay mussels
rotting in August sun

I am foreign
banana plant
from seed
Auntie slips me
an envelope
inside is a
hundred dollar bill
for helping her
file weekly

I accept with
both hands
thinking
it's too much
Today the
sun'll be eclipsed
but I cannot see
so I sit in the
small yard
smoking just to keep
everything off of me

Nothing of sixteen
was sweet
crack thru black
metal guardian
crack top heineken
with my thumb
indentation,
always a man yells
somewhere over
the wall

the walls are
plentiful
like amendments
between people
and their words,
strawberry stamp
a thank you
note for little
coordination
younger you and I

push a cart
onto a corner
to drink tea
and
  build up
strangers by the
sidewalk --
a pavilion erected
on vine holds
no chess games
just mates

I know
what has
happened to
my vision --
when I speak
to you I am
left dazzled
can only hear
a single white
beater reflecting
sun on a line

vast elephant
weed becomes
a tree through
neglect --
and so father
must climb and
cut and chop
while white
neighbors through
branches peek

now it's over
the roof
so now it's
too late
to unroot!
while I
sweat the
grasshopper eats
sunflower
leaves.

dreamt song 14.17.17.8

The world is sick. We must not say so.
After all, a muzzle flashes, the world web burns,
we the people flash and burn,
and moreover my father told me as a boy,
in Cantonese, in good weather
do we find wood for the rain.

Now violet evening I feel it pouring
out of our eyes and mouth.
The twin Comcast tower is a drag,
and somewhere underground, a man
has an entire rotisserie chicken
to himself.

At 18th and Fed I run a five buck tab,
this tiny sardine my escapism,
chopped lettuce mayo anna pickle
I step outside to feel no trickle
but the tailwind of the double 17
think, "call 215 GET-A-CAB".

er

Rise on empty

no Chivas no Dunhills

Marlboro & Grapefruit

Besaid Island alarm

Taeko Onuki's Copine

South Jersey Metal's conditions

lead me to Woodbury, Deptford, and back
route 41 pitch black

solemn and stoic in chartreuse

I am my father's angel

in that I make sure

he doesn't work himself to death
sippin' on his tiny soda
starin' at his headlights in my rearview
Walt Whitman before me

Jafar

Jafar came to the west end
of Rottenhouse Pork
for the sun he says
found me with it
says
the universe is mental
and with it
what do we know is real
I reply
the I
yes he sits up
excitedly
brings out a shiny red pocket trumpet
not the cornet
waiting to be repaired
see this woman
woman and man
sitting with their newborn
across from us
how do you refer to yourself?
I'm sitting on this park bench
right -- I
he tests the pocket trumpet's range
plays a couple old songs
some of which I recognize
yet the names aren't there
as my name isn't there
escaped him again
that's fine
knowing the name of something
doesn't mean you know anything anyway
that's Feynman
I sketch him as he plays
until the sun disappears
behind the apartments
now it's cold
he stops
says I have a good hand
I say we both do
different ways
he says
alright brother
we bump
shake each other by the forearms
remind him of my name
we part once again
I consider going home
but instead went to Barnes & Noble
across the street to piss
read a tiny Ginsberg book
and wrote

labor

painting a clementine
is like
oh so go-
frustrating,
the light when the day goes
holding him by rope
holding everything for my father
shining light onto him
onto whatever he sees
when the light goes
the labor of clementine
in my right synthetic sable
my left the very real fruit

well I

weight!  less
fresh fruit
ew mean to tale me
nobody
and  You nobody
groan love me

when day go la la
date grow fine meat
I reach my maximum
       
cries, answer, cries, answer, cries
           answer, cries

Identity cries sis
everything goes with the river

and the cars
the smoke
red brick

red black
cries sis of my heart
all swell that end swell
well I swell fat

siamese

too bad nobody likes poetry
said my old teacher

he sent me Maged Zaher's poems
and after reading one 

I thought about you,
reincarnated as a buttery cake
I asked but you weren't sure about reincarnation

it's tied into the caste system !

damn, I hadn't even thought of that

I thought of the second line
of what the cats said in Lady and the Tramp,
"We are Siamese if you don't please"
I repeated this line in my head
shit made no sense to me
I tucked myself into your hip tat
into Madonna's Material Girl
when you do your stretches
all of a sudden
I'm the best personal trainer
I'm your personal trainer
I'm Siamese if you please
I'm Siamese if you don't please
whatever the fuck it means

u

      U prefer
the personal
touch that U
can only get
with hired goons

the doctor was
randomly selected

by a blind algorithm
and a black hand

put yr head right
 the fuck here
for Us
dragimout like
a blood lemon

Attention all
passengers
our pilot is
having a seizure,

is anyone on board

a doctor?
yeh, yall fucked him
 up real gook

he's in the corner
mumbling
gibberish
kill me.
just kill
me. just
kill me.

Inside the Chest

The man didn't know how heavy one stepped without the presence of floorboards. All the times he was outdoors, whether on concrete sidewalks, linoleumed floors of both massive and humble institutions, or the uneven ground of the forests, everyone he knew stepped weightlessly. The clicks of heels, the squeaks of sneakers, or the slapping of sandals on dirt, none of which ever gave him pause to think on how much weight a human being carried in their footsteps.

Just one of the many things that reminded him daily on how peaceful it would be to not have to live with other people. The floorboards of the old South Philadelphia row home, a three-story house, once a rarity on the block, squelched, creaked, and thundered at all hours of the evening. On the days that he never left his room, writing in silence, he imagined living with a baby rhinoceros, that from time to time would have to tumble awkwardly down the stairs to get food and water from the kitchen. His mind would trace the baby rhinoceros's path back up the stairs and into its room, as if he were using echolocation.

The day was a bust, if he had to describe it. A bust for creative endeavors. He drew in ink a large Japanese-style bottle of beer and a little glass beside it, full with its fizzy head. Beside the glass, a simple sandwich of lettuce and tomato. No one would even know that the bread had a cream cheese spread, let alone the kind of cream cheese that has chives, he thought. Details like this are either always impossible to convey on behalf of the artist or impossible to detect on behalf of the observer. To anybody else, this was a lettuce and tomato sandwich. To him, it was a lettuce and tomato sandwich with cream cheese and chives.

He capped his pen in resignation and pumped some hot water from his thermos into a mug of green tea leaves. Sipping it, he thought of a television series he had recently come to love -- Samurai Gourmet. In one episode, the protagonist, having volunteered to be an extra on a film set, looking forward to a free catered lunch, is told a story by a much more experienced extra about the famed director Akira Kurosawa. Supposedly, during a shoot, Kurosawa had placed a prop within a chest that was completely off-screen. That prop, he thought, was the same as the cream cheese with chives on the inside of his lettuce and tomato sandwich.

colors

my orange rose hangs to dry
crisp to the finger and ear

today my body is still yellow
purple and red

nothing should be done
but to let my bruises fade

ESOL

to not have
sock showing
how you choose a
seat to how
you hold yr hands
when passing by an
attractive group of
ppl sitting on a
park bench - the
evening is overcast
and I sit down
on my second choice
and say to myself
don't go home
just yet - sit
down - have a
good seat and
write a damn
poem already,
it has been
months -
ESOL manifest
ESOL is having the tools
but not the words -
ESOL is sitting
inside an autosaved doc
ESOL is shrinkwrap
boiled eggs for
a holiday you've
yet to understand
ESOL is doing it
to assimilate -
I've forgotten
to take time again
like my once favorite loaf -
ESOL is an
approaching dribble
and not having
anyone willing to
teach, or to only
receive coach cards
because your gay black
friend didn't think
you cared enough
about football anyway
to want to have a
Deion Sanders or a
Randall Cunningham or
whoever the hell that
was who played for
the Minnesota Vikings
you decide that
was your favorite team.
never have a
clear idea
of Minnesota
in that era - or
maybe you gravitated
toward the color purple
color of royalty,
they say -
but whose royalty?
Not here -
it must've been your
friend's influence
it must've been him
swimming round yr
parent's porch on
A St with the
ball under his arm
asking for you.
ESOL is stealing a
particularly brilliant
marble, only to
stand up and hear
the click on concrete
from where you clumsily
stashed it in yr shorts
grandfather saw

red see

If you're horrified by

Aleppo, give a gift to inspire

Unwrap Speed

Quyen Nghiem, not I,

replied to a comment on this

bring Russian style

kleptocracy to the US,

add salted egg yolk

and you'll get the Big
Mac secret sauce

sauce pls I'm a

little vulnerable now,

why haven't you yet

tumblrized yr sexuality?

Would you like another

martini and talk

about martinis

or wheeling you around

the dance floor

I'll make you two promises,

a very good steak that's

medium rare and the

truth which is very rare

I am not a sore loser,

we are not sore losers,

but I know what can

be gained by losing,

and I'm damn sure

using this 76% off

comprehensive online course

eat com suon out of

newspaper

squatting pot of

mama ramen

look to the east

after Doanh

and close my eyes

fs

at night i sit alone

i think about my team

i share their joys and sorrows

iron bar shortcut

     there's one way to become a comedian - it's thru this poem
come         through Feltonville they'll say we didn't know him
By stood       on my porch offering touch football
half in the            shade that concrete space a place to feel tall
white sun glazed                faded Korean store Hershey's sign
on the corner with some            quarters Pepsi-Kona TV time
cola-coffee sweet like Toffey             buy a composition book
a helping hand from the owner's kid     just like me he looked
Kev in the clouds after public pool ramen        in metal bowls
lotta pepper on that oyeh two bags from the         corner store
can't swim cuz girl took a shit and didn't clean her           butt
weekdays was good morning weekends was what's up
stay together young lovers that was mom and dad
her crying on a blue stoop never saw anyone that sad
and when I go back I get the feeling that I've never left
realize worse things in this life and the next to accept

e. loudon (for mei)

        Mei

beautiful    as this country
that bears yr name

took a ride with me on the blvd
from C st to Holme Ave
to find three nail guns in my father's garage

when the old neighbors died
eldest aunt bought the place
rife with americana

 in the basement Smith-Coronas
multiple plaques from Adams Lanes
two Super 8's in their case, a juke

I was there to help my father
stucco Mary's second story
then got her life story

she was from Yugoslavia
stuffed a grocery bag of peppers
                                from her garden

into my arms
and kissed me
rapidly

zato-itchy

my god am i itchy
an itchy boy
can't itch it
beb sez cuz
that's how she sez it
i say it's scratch not itch
you don't itch an itch
you scratch it
though i can't scratch it
just gotta write it

aspects of the pulse

The pulse should be taken
at the calm dawn
when the yin energy
has yet to stir
and the yang energy
has yet to disperse
food and drink have
yet to be taken
and the vessel channels are
not yet overly active
whether the five depots
are in surplus or deficient
whether the six palaces
are strong or weak
outside hammer on wood
man murmurs to man
dog yelps to dog
bird chirps to bird
the gray sky is blinding
observing silently
the essence-brilliance
I am overflowing
with the urge to leave
a little legacy


                              (huangdi neijing / yellow emperor's inner canon)

ah!

" you women --
who loved me for that small, hesitating
love for you I always veered from,
because I felt the realm in your faces "

ah! you wrote to me at such a time,

it finally became October, the month

which marks all the important birthdays to come

thank you for this gift

the changing of the season opportune

to ponder what could be, to reminisce 

a time to reflect

on my own thirst for being desired

and that knowledge of being desired is enough

end of summer

if you cast that lure, what'll you get?
i was on the line, of course, a hound
the crushed lime in yr drink
but you'll fail, they always fail, she said

when i stopped at the recently trimmed hedge
i threw myself in it, caressing it all over
having a sudden bad idea, i was so caught
up in all senses, its rough pliability,

yr fragrance, and that of the foliage
seeing a man out of the corner of my eye
where no one should be, and turning
that eye onto ourselves

i realized i had no belonging here
and so having left myself bare
in the cool dark morning that ended summer
i allowed others to find my way home

his story of the blues (L.H.)

O the sun is so hot
and the day is so doggone long
Yes the sun is so hot
and the day is so doggone long
and that's the reason
I'm singin' this doggone song

mortally wounded

mom
what does
mortally
wounded
mean?
it means you
have a
wound you
will die
from

separation

separation
is natural
shake well

in henri rousseau's dream

in henri rousseau's dream
the wad of cloth between
your legs become too much
you pull and pull at it
your palms explode into wildflowers
your hair is still your hair
and all the world is
         is

bronze

bronze body

among black bodies

i'm older now 

so put a lot of ice in it

mediation water 

can talk to ya

the big bearded duh

talks to ya

this final fantasy

talks to ya

i get in a car 

and already it's too far

get the fuck out quick 

at least wear the seatbelt
while texting

i saw roger rabbit 

twice on WB17

i'm glad i came 

despite the rain

in a dream that night 

i blessed a man

he smiled at me

now imbued

with the courage to do 

what he needs to do

fyl

a philosophical zombie
what's so heavy about it
i have no answer
let alone an approach

monkey

real dim mak
the five ways of attack
this is how you don't play
one piece pirate warriors
how to survive in strange ways
and the old days
how to overcome
your own fear in fighting
this is something
called a soulsong
this is shinichi atobe's
butterfly effect in motion
or how to defend
against a dog attack
there are wild dogs
in the vietnamese countryside
my sister was bitten
by a monkey in the city
i will come when i wake
this is eight traits
of successful people
or why should you
trust unanimous decisions
i read that i'm not using
the internet on the internet
but that the internet is
using me using me
i have the history of tattoos
just below the surface
uncle's five dots in a cross
father's eagle  over his heart
that reminds me
of the philadelphia eagle
same eagle on the sweatshirt
i wore to my first reading
that i got at salvation army
the one that collapsed at 21st & Market
they say that building inspector
committed suicide but
i had doubts

vh

disenfrenchfried people
drape the lamp with my blanket
everybody now wants a banh mi
i still call it a viet hoagie

ai

those older than i say

an active imagination

wrapped in fleece,

 trying to discover unconscious roots

anxiety away

i want just the image of a tree, not the real

slapping the keyboard, i throw my head back

just a sixteen year old

and a christian eon

toward future fatty opposite

steep my body in the yellow of yr room   

knowing love,  lasting heat,
illuminates

body

You are invited to sit and
talk with an acquaintance.
She's also an Asian poet
and of some renown. You
both decide on a shady
bench in a most public
area. Midway she asserts
that she isn't interested in
any sexual relationship.
You give face and accept
her rejection of your body.
Not knowing what it was
you said or indicated with
your body. Walking Walnut,
you want to laugh but you don't.

within a word

'Responsibilities' was the new word
I put my hand out for her
she held a baby carrot
I thought of her young
black childhood. I squeaked
onto the wall, 'Sensibilities'.
She told me that was the kind
of snack she got as a kid, no sweets
we finally got to shake
hands at the end of the day
I said my goodbyes, descend
twenty-seven floors in the time
it takes to adjust my pant cuffs
walk out onto Market St
with brisk spring energy

ping

 ask yrself

why you're here
in someone else's

promised land
wrinkled brown eyes dip

to the flourescence
  my thigh

touching yours
on the bus

42 minutes stood up
gym bag and all

no matter how
much money

this man is screaming
 for 20 cents

all he wants
is 20 cents

and nobody'll give
 it to him, not like that

not that sound
 of sarcastic desperation

red wool skirt

frantic arrows to my head
hard worrisome dick

i'm not in search of anything
something to practice

humble kid in 04 infiniti g35
(not his) just here for the reading

in calcium he purchases
the morning fraught with incense

tea by plant most'll think dead
it just needs some sun again

taking simple pleasure in wind, light,
and body that feed us

exclusive

watch dark souls 3 early footage
smoke from hello kitty bowl
tip well on house red who wouldn't
beautiful people beautiful bartender
bartender who works on poetry nights
listeners who work on their posture
poets who sweep back their hair
lovers who look past themselves
i look past the streetlamp to the moon
what does it mean to be unkindled
tomorrow i will return to work

in prog

i came back into the world like

latino chokes out white beard hero

siciliane beside bed remind me: pakistani hash

by way of fresh slices each night

which is nothing like what we got back home

back home my pronouns are wrong

lill is 65 and works 40 hour weeks 

at the church of scientology for $3.50 an hour

jill is 63 and works in a law office

she defaulted on her student loans

i read her letters from the collections agency

skipped lunch to spend 30 minutes in the bathroom stall

trifold

after dinner
monkeyed with her puzzle
going through some length

after several minutes
edges curled into petals
overshot the moon

in military sun time
dad said don't
join the army so i didn't

ril-key

I palmed my
  red fleece dress
  the speck of
  an island

some Evening played
enjoying a higher standard
of living that I stopped
pondering

a heavy idea
she left me
a book of elegies
before bed

dilly dally

January is nearly over and I'm dilly dallyin'
This is no year to dilly dally, I've seen the dying
electronic blue eyes scoff at diamonds
get a day's work done

slept in the shade of ignorance
I first learned of angels on Wyoming
got my mum's sig to see Olivia Hussey
in Zefirelli's Romeo & Juliet

drew on my skin, drew off yours
popped yolks, spun tops,
the yard in flip flops
demanding labor

thankfulness

can't put all that on the past
push it, step off
                            ( softly,
                               like in wuxia )

I'm heart heavy right now
actually feel it with my hand

in a mind of mine again
where I can!

knowing whom
thankfulness goes to

mum's stew
mum's beef stew

lemme lone

these last years come in a hunt
in smaller increments of thought
put down as some fall short
 of impressed i've been behind
the yellow line the whole time
with my right foot swinging
and my left foot rooted
ah i don't give a shit really
y'know you wake up and you're
slipping into snug fabrics to warm
yr genitals and wonder what the temp
is gonna be and the device says 20
but the real feel is negative 3?
i hush my voice and tilt my eyeballs
upwards in that jack nicholson fashion
to say i want that real feel outta you
now get me the hell outta this maze!

stones

So the unamerican
unbuttons his cuffs like he's going to live, breathing
with one lung    one lung with  amazing timing
everyone envied this little clementine wedge

so juicy

such is life in the gum mountain
spreading him open like a sansui
she once made him a suiseki
so loved her little scholar

ma
 put 'em
in the garden

junk

clean master downloaded

every day cleaning junk files

scanning cpu temperature

eating soup, half the time homemade

half the time au bon pain, for here

take a self portrait w/ a new device

mingle it with the older portraits from old device

transfer everything from old device to new device

using mobile transfer app

half the time high

spray the spray between thighs

sometimes my balls burn from the cold

most of the time i'm plain dry

some fragrant post-shave balm to soothe

moisturizing words with breath

in a batman robe writing prolifically

in front of a space heater sagacious

in stance and in streaming decades old tv

i need a scapegoat so i play scapegoat face down

and end my turn

hit words

miss the mark
a whole two
two three generations

i don't see
but i think
on the word massacre

septa yellow

is that snake alive or is
that muddle one the most terrifying
noise of my childhood
and i grew up on e. louden
oh dear fantasy low self
started with tits
the same family runs
violent string making
what would be the shape
of the female
i can appreciate
drink them quite rudely
more experiments by chinese
in a mess of antidotes
the space we do to ourselves
a woven blanket of pills
represents (an average human lifetime)
something i forget
so i pinch monday cannabis
because it makes white light
of poet laureateship
i see the color of the chord
and it pulls me

hell no shut up

they're tired and they want
 a piece of this earth
some want the whole thing

i don't laugh i get on the bus

we heard some vehicle that was loud
there was no west coast presence
nor big market     old man screams
    but it's wasted

mu

shit only happens
when you take away
their football